Tottenham vs. Liverpool: Aug 31 (Sunday)

We play SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better with 2 strikers.

Henderson MOTM. He really likes playing against Spurs.

Sterling should be our number 7 next year.

Balotelli is GOAT. He'll start scoring freely when he's match fit. Very unlucky last night, although he probably should of scored at least one. Signs are there though, he'll replace Luis Suarez. Give him 1-2 years, and he'll reach that "GOAT" level himself.

Sturridge is looking good but his finishing has been off. 2 goals in his last 9, he needs to compose himself infront of goal. Still think he has like 30 goals or something ridiculous and he reaches his 50 appearances mark in his next game iirc. Not too shabby.

Still shaky at the back. Lovren ffs.

Skrtel getting blamed despite not being on the pitch. Laughable.

Moreno looked good. Let's hope he's consistent.

Allen's dive won us a comfortable 3 points.

Oh, and Gerrard played injured last night. Or was hurt in the first half. Why'd he see out the game? He's 34 years old ffs.

mr-r34 wrote:Also Balo needs to learn how to tackle.

He's been a CF all his life, and the first time he'll ever get consistent football is right now at Liverpool. Relax. He did very well last night defensively, and looked positive going forward too. Just needs to get match fit and he'll start banging them in. Was really good last night, helped free space for SAS, got into some great positions himself. 2 of those been clear cut; 3 if he didn't rush the open goal shot, and helped a great deal defensively too.

(This is directed at you and Kick, not sure how you can describe his performance as "lazy" and well, sloppy too, in yesterdays' game.)

Steven Gerrard becomes first Liverpool player in history to score in 16 consecutive seasons

Allen's dive won us a comfortable 3 points.

It was and was not a dive. He could have stayed up, but that was definitely a foul. The ref made the right call for me.

He went down very very easy. He's got a small build, but he definitely played for the penalty and thankfully got it as we managed to settle for 3 points after that. Really needed a second goal as Spurs looked like they could of equalized and that pretty much ruined any sort of motivation they had.

Red can you differentiate between a statement and a question mate?

I did after all say he did well to track back and the only negative was i saw him walk a few more times then i would of liked, hence the fitness questions.

Except I didn't quote you questioning his fitness, I was quoting your 'statement' on how he can't tackle.

Again, half of that was directed at Kick's "Balo is just lazy." remark.

Allen did not dive but he played for penalty and it was a clear foul if it is outside box. But ref should have given Ade also a penalty for a late challenge, but it wouldnt have affected the result anyways.

While I completely disagree on the "penalty", Heil is right the result would never have changed.

I am not sure if it was the team being lazy, or Poch's tactics, but Spurs didn't press at all in the entire game. So for all of our possession we left you guys wide open spaces to counter us with. Then when we had the ball we weren't moving it quick enough to do the same when there were numerous channels available.

We needed a difference maker at CM to take advantage of your poor back line in transition, but the ball just never got their quick enough or with any real quality.

Sucks to lose, but I hope this was noted by Poch & Co. because I am not sure it would have been fixed even if Paulinho or Dembele were available to start.

Thoughts on this game:

I think the most important takeaway here is the gulf in quality, especially considering it was an away game. Any question as to who is the "favorite" for that fourth spot should've been answered resoundingly yesterday - we are better than Spurs, United and Everton right now, and it would be very surprising to see any of them finish ahead of us. We brought on subs that would've walked into their starting 11. (Also, as a brief aside, can we just mention that Eriksen was invisible yesterday? I didn't realize he was playing until he got taken off )

As for our team, my thoughts:

I thought Allen had a good game. It's clear that Hendo + another pressing CM in front of Gerrard protects the defense the best. Allen did his job admirably, although I'm sure Can and even Coutinho, when he receives the right instructions, would perform as well. Either way I thought it was the performance we needed in that position.

We all know my love for Hendo, no need to address his game. Finally got his kit on Friday

Manquillo and Moreno were both excellent. Moreno's goal... wow.

I thought Balotelli was good, although looked nervous tbh with his shooting. Hopefully he gets that out of him over the next few games, his movement will get him a bagful of goals this season if he keeps up the workrate. Promising debut - none of the problems we hear about, if he continues on like this he'll be worth 16m and then some.

Now to the important part - the CBs. I thought when we were out of possession they were the most convincing of any Liverpool defense I've seen in the last year. I didn't see any of the positional errors we've become used to (aside from Lovren challenging that header right before Chadli's shot) and there's a reason Spurs only got one shot on goal - it wasn't just their finishing, we did a good job restricting them.

That being said, there was something very off in our distribution from the back in this game. Sakho, Lovren, Gerrard (who was injured) and Mignolet were all consistently missing both long and short passes. Our possession was severely hampered by the number of times we went backwards from their half, all the way to Mignolet, followed by him booting it out of play or straight to a Spurs player. Even worse than that, though, were the number of times Sakho, Lovren and Gerrard passed the ball directly to a Spurs player in our own half. To their credit, Lovren and Sakho consistently covered well when this happened to shut the attack down, but City and Chelsea (and teams of their quality in the Champions League) will absolutely punish us for that. It cannot keep happening if this is to be our CB pairing moving forward.

Henderson and Allen together really makes it hard for the other team to string together anything with a slow build up to be honest. Their closing down and mind for the game really makes the opponent have to move quickly and forces a lot of mistakes/misplaced passes IMO.